The Last Drive In
by Broadwaylover5300
Summary: Amber witnesses a key element of her teenage years being destroyed. Amber/Shelley mostly, with some Amber/Corny thrown in!


**Hey, everybody! Haven't seen you in a while!**

**This is a one-shot that I was inspired to write after hearing a great song about the same subject! I hope you all enjoy it!**

Amber pulled off the interstate and drove into the heart of downtown Baltimore. Amber smiled as she looked all around her as she drove, smiling at all the memories that every building, every park, every restaurant brought her. It had been a long time since she had been in Baltimore. The last time she had been here had been in 1979, when Corny had passed on from brain cancer. She had come for the funeral, and, in a sense, Amber was in Baltimore for another funeral. Tammy, the last council member still in Baltimore, had called Amber and mentioned that the Globe Drive-In, the most popular night-spot in Baltimore in its heyday, was being torn down after forty years to make way for a mall, Amber, who had frequented the theater so many times, had felt obligated to be there for its final moments.

Amber arrived at the drive-in before any of the bulldozers, wrecking balls, and stuff like that arrived. She pulled over across the street and walked over to the drive-in. She walked past the booth that had held the men who "escorted" out anybody who started horsing around badly, past the old brick projection building and walked out into the main area.

It had never been paved. It was the same hot, dusty space that Amber remembered. Swirls of dust blew across the large, now empty space, in between the black poles that held the speakers that one hooked into their cars. The screen, once a gleaming white, was now a faded yellow color.

Suddenly, time seemed to stop, and Amber was suddenly back in 1962. She saw everybody, all the council members that she knew and loved laughing and joking with her. Even Corny was there, although Corny didn't come to the drive-in nearly as much as the council kids did. She saw the beaming white light coming from the top of the projection building and flickering onto the screen, every parking space filled, the smell of popcorn coming from the concession stand. It was just like the way it used to be.

Suddenly, Amber's memories were ripped to pieces as the first bulldozer came into the drive-in. Amber dashed to the sidewalk and watched as the long line of demolition equipment crawled down the street in single file like a slow-moving train. One by one, slowly but surely, they each pulled into the drive-in. The foreman jumped down from the last wrecking ball.

"Okay, boys!" he yelled. "We're gonna stay here until the job's finished, even if it takes us all night!"

Amber didn't really hear what the foreman said, she was too busy marveling at the sight of all the equipment. The way the equipment was lit, especially the wrecking balls, made them look like the monsters from the old B-movies the Globe used to play.

In fact, a horror movie had been the first movie that Amber had seen at the Globe, when Corny had taken her to see _Psycho_. It had been on a double bill with an old 1958 Christopher Lee Dracula movie. Corny had taken Amber because Velma had said that she wouldn't be caught dead at a horror movie, and Amber had wanted to see the Hitchcock movie so badly, after all of the girls had told her about it. Corny knew this, and, out of the goodness of his heart, he had taken Amber to see it. Amber remembered everything about that trip, the smell of the popcorn, the feel of the cool leather upholstery of Corny's Mustang, the way she had screamed when the famous shower scene had flickered across the screen, the way Corny had laughed and comforted her. She remembered everything, especially how, since then, she had developed a love for horror movies and had gone to see every one she was able. She had seen zombies exact bloody revenges, creatures from the deep attack and devour swimmers, Peter Fonda and Warren Oates fight off evil cults… she had seen them all on that screen, and she had loved them all.

Amber was taken out of that memory when Amber heard the splintering sound of wood being destroyed as a wrecking ball was taken to the screen. She watched as a bulldozer made its way down the rows of parking spaces, taking out speaker after speaker. Sparks flew and cracked from the bare wires and into the dirt as the bulldozer ran over them. Maybe it was Amber, but the sparks crackling sounded a lot like gunshots.

Amber thought back over how many gunshots she had heard come from those speakers. Cowboys, soldiers, gangsters, thieves, James Bond she had all seen at this theater, and she had heard countless gunshots from all of them.

In fact, although Amber was not a huge fan of action movies, although she still liked them, there was one that held a special place in her heart, not because of anything on the screen, though. It had been 1973, a few years before Amber had left Baltimore for good. Shelley, although she seemed to hold a strange sort of animosity for Amber, had been told by her mother that, in order to get in good with Velma, that she should invite Amber for a girls' night out at the theater. Shelley had grudgingly taken Amber to a double feature of _The French Connection _and a new movie, _Dillinger_, about the life of the gangster John Dillinger. Although Amber enjoyed _The French Connection_, which she had seen before, the less acclaimed _Dillinger_ was the movie that Amber remembered better, not so much for what happened in the movie, however. It had been during that movie that she and Shelley had finally come clean with each other, telling each other how they really felt about each other. After that, they had both climbed into the back seat of Shelley's Chevy Nova and had their first of many secret make-out sessions, sessions that they were deathly afraid of mentioning to anybody else. However, Amber had highly enjoyed those sessions, as she knew Shelley also did, and so they did it as often as possible anyway.

It was then that Amber noticed that a lot of the guys behind the wheels of the demolition equipment had tears in their eyes. Amber had a feeling that it wasn't just the dust that was doing it, either. She knew, in some way, that it was because, like her, the drive-in held a special place in their hearts, as it did in hers.


End file.
